Nancy Dusenberry

PAINTINGS

Traveling Women

Most of us were given a set of beautiful luggage at our High School graduation. It was emblematic of the sophisticated women we hoped we were becoming. We were “college women”, nonchalant travelers, glamorous, waiting for our fascinating careers, for love, for heartbreak and for fame. I still have some of the coats, scarves and of course the luggage and I am still creating the narrative.

The Fabric of Women

We may not be typical, but the way my family chronicles time and events is by what we wore. We remember it all. Each of us can describe Mother’s coats, shoes, hats and gloves. We enrich every “coat and white pique hat, and I was in that blue faille duster with matching tam.” We test each other’s memories with the likes of, “What coats hung in the back hall on Oak Street?” and laugh until we fall down remembering Daddy in his brown jacquard bathrobe, hair all wild with sleep, shod in size 14 moccasins, scaring suitors off of our front porch. Once I asked my 100 year old, blind and nearly deaf Grandmother what she did with her time. She answered, “I remember.” I know the fabric of the women I have painted. I know which ones were vulnerable, which ones confident, which ones funny, which ones zany or not to be trifled with. I love to paint women wearing the clothes they chose.